Beautiful Losers Page 8
GODDESSES: the way I do (a sweet punctuation. Now they are women waiting for their men, soft and wet they squat on balconies looking for our smoke signals, touching themselves)
GAVIN GATE: Don’t you realize
even fools have feelings too?
So baby
GODDESSES: Ahhhhhhhhh
GAVIN GATE: C’mon back (a command)
and let me dry (a hope)
the tears (the real life of pity)
from your eye (one eye, darling, one eye at a time)
GAVIN AND THE GODDESSES WHIP THEMSELVES WITH ELECTRIC BRAIDS
Cause I would never hurt you
GODDESSES: I would never hurt you
GAVIN GATE: No no I would never hurt you
GODDESSES: I would never hurt you
GAVIN GATE: Cause Baby when it hurt you
DRUM: Swak!
GAVIN GATE: Don’t you know it hurts me too?
GODDESSES: hurt me too
GAVIN GATE: It hurts me so bad
GODDESSES: hurt me too
GAVIN GATE: I never desert you
GODDESSES: hurt me too
THEY FADE, THE ELECTRIC OPERATORS, GAVIN, THE GODDESSES, THEIR BACKS BLEEDING, THEIR GENITALIA RED AND SORE. THE GREAT STORY HAS BEEN TOLD, IN THE DICTATORSHIP OF TIME, A COME HAS RENT THE FLAG, TROOPS ARE MASTURBATING WITH 1948 PIN-UPS IN THEIR TEARS, A PROMISE HAS BEEN RENEWED.
RADIO: That was Gavin Gate and the Goddesses.…
I ran for the telephone. I called the station. Is that the Early Morning Record Gal, I shouted into the mouthpiece. Is it? Is it really you? Thank you, thank you. A dedication? Oh, my love. Don’t you understand how long I’ve been in the kitchen alone? I’m irregular. I suffer from irregularity. I’m burnt bad in the thumb. Don’t Sir me, you Early Morning Record Gal. I have to talk to someone such as you because –
TELEPHONE: Click click.
What are you doing? Hey! Hey! Hello, hello, oh, no. I remembered that there was a telephone booth a few blocks down. I had to talk to her. My shoes stuck in the semen as I walked across the linoleum. I gained the door. I commanded the elevator. I had so much to tell her, her with her blue voice and city knowledge. Then I was out on the street, 4 a.m. in the morning, the streets damp and dark as newly poured cement, the streetlamps nearly merely decoration; the moon given speed by flying scarves of cloud, the thick walled warehouses with gold family names, the cold blue air filled with smells of burlap and the river, the sound of trucks with country vegetables, the creaks of a train unloading skinned animals from beds of ice, and men in overalls with great armfuls of traveling food, great wrestling embraces in the front-line war of survival, and men would win, and men would tell the grief in victory – I was outside in the cold ordinary world, F. had led me here by many compassionate tricks, a gasp in praise of existence blasted my chest and unfolded my lungs like a newspaper in the wind.
31
The King of France was a man. I was a man. Therefore I was the King of France. F.! I’m sinking again.
32
Canada became a royal colony of France in 1663. Here come the troops led by le marquis de Tracy, lieutenant-general of the armies of the king, here they come marching through the snow, twelve hundred tall men, the famous régiment de Carignan. The news travels down the icy banks of the Mohawk: the King of France has touched the map with his white finger. The Intendant Talon, the Governor M. de Courcelle, and Tracy, they gaze over the infested wilderness. My brothers, let us be masters of the Richelieu! Voices spoken over maps, voices spoken into windows, and the forts rise along shore, Sorel, Chambly, Sainte-Thérèse, Saint-Jean, Sainte-Anne on an island in Lake Champlain. My brothers, the Iroquois live in too many trees. January 1666, M. de Courcelle led a column of men deep into Mohawk country, a Napoleonic blunder. He went without his Algonquin scouts, who did not happen to show up on time. The Indians marked the aimless trail of his retreat with many bristling corpses. Tracy waited until September of the same year. Out of Québec, into the scarlet forests, marched six hundred of the Carignan, another six hundred of the Militia, and one hundred friendly Indians. Four priests accompanied the expedition. After a three-week march they reached the first Mohawk village, Gandaouagué. The fires were cold, the village was deserted, as were all the villages they would come to. Tracy planted a Cross, a Mass was celebrated, and over the empty long houses rose the solemn music of the Te Deum. Then they burned the village to the ground, Gandaouagué and all those they came to, they devastated the countryside, destroyed provisions of corn and bean, into the fire went every harvest. The Iroquois sued for peace, and as in 1653 priests were dispatched to every village. The truce of 1666 lasted eighteen years. Mgr. de Laval blessed his Fathers before they left Québec in the search for souls. The priests entered the rebuilt village of Gandaouagué in the summer of 1667. The Mohawks sounded their great shell trumpets as the Robes-Noires, they of the long black dresses, settled among them. They stayed three days at the village we have studied, but here we may note a delicate attention of Providence. They were billeted in the cabin of Catherine Tekakwitha, and she served them, she followed them as they visited the captives of the village, Christian Hurons and Algonquins, watched as they baptized their young, wondered as they isolated the old in far-off cabins. After three days the priests moved on to Gandarago, then to Tionnontoguen, where they were greeted by two hundred braves, a chief’s eloquent welcome, and the cheers of the people who preferred the intrusion of foreign magic to the wrath of the Carignan. Five missions were established throughout the Iroquois confederation: Sainte-Marie at Tionnontoguen, Saint-François-Xavier at Onneyout, Saint-Jean-Baptiste at Onnontagué, Saint-Joseph at Tsonnontouan – from lac Saint-Sacrement to Erie, the work of only six evangelists, but a story of fire behind them. In 1668 our village Gandaouagué moved again. From the south bank of the Mohawk they crossed the river, built their long houses once again a few miles to the west, where the Mohawk meets the Cayudetta. They called the new village Kahnawaké, which means at the rapids. Close by was a small clear spring where she came each day for water. She kneeled on the moss. The water sang in her ears. The fountain rose from the heart of the forest, crystal and green were the tiny orchards of the moss. She drew a wet hand across her forehead. She longed for a deep brotherhood with the water, she longed for the spring to guarantee the gift she had made of her body, she longed to kneel wet before black robes. She swooned, collapsed beside the upturned bucket, weeping like Jill.
33
Be with me, religious medals of all kinds, those suspended on silver chains, those pinned to the underwear with a safety pin, those nestling in black chest hair, those which run like tram cars on the creases between the breasts of old happy women, those that by mistake dig into the skin while love is made, those that lie abandoned with cufflinks, those that are fingered like coins and inspected for silver hallmark, those that are lost in clothes by necking fifteen-year-olds, those that are put in the mouth while thinking, those very expensive ones that only thin small girl children are permitted to wear, those hanging in a junk closet along with unknotted neckties, those that are kissed for luck, those that are torn from the neck in anger, those that are stamped, those that are engraved, those that are placed on streetcar tracks for curious alterations, those that are fastened to the felt on the roofs of taxis, be with me as I witness the ordeal of Catherine Tekakwitha.
34
–Take your fingers out of your ears, said le P. Jean Pierron, first permanent missionary at Kahnawaké. You won’t be able to hear me if you keep your fingers in your ears.
– Ha, ha, chuckled the ancient members of the village, who were too old to learn new tricks. You can lead us to water but you can’t make us drink, us old dogs and horses.
– Remove those fingers immediately!
– Dribble, dribble, went the foam and spit between toothless jaws as the old ones squatted around the priest.
The priest went back to his cabin and took out his paints, for he was a skilled artist. A few days la
ter he emerged with his picture, a bright mandala of the torments of hell. All the damned had been portrayed as Mohawk Indians. The mocking aged Indians squatted around him, finger-eared still, as he uncovered his work. Gasps escaped from their rotting mouths.
– Now, my children, this is what awaits you. Oh, you can keep your fingers where they are. See. A demon will place round your neck a rope and drag you along. A demon will cut off your head, extract your heart, pull out your intestines, lick up your brain, drink your blood, eat your flesh, and nibble your bones. But you will be incapable of dying. Though your body be hacked to pieces it will revive again. The repeated hacking will cause intense pain and torture.
– Arghhh!
The colors of the picture were red, white, black, orange, green, yellow, and blue. In the very center was the representation of a very old Iroquois woman, bent and wrinkled. She was enclosed in her own personal frame of finely drawn skulls. Leaning over the oval skulls is a Jesuit priest who is trying to instruct her. Her arthritic fingers are stuffed in her ears. A demon twists corkscrews of fire into her ears, perhaps jamming the fingers in there forever. A demon hurls a javelin of flame at her deplorable breasts. Two demons apply a fiery two-handled saw to her crotch. A demon encourages several burning snakes to twist around her bleeding ankles. Her mouth is a burnt black hole seared in an eternal screech for attention. As Marie de l’Incarnation wrote her son, On ne peut pas les voir sans frémir.
– Arghhh!
II a baptisé un grand nombre de personnes, writes Marie de l’Incarnation.
– That’s right, pull them right out, the priest invited them. And don’t put them back. You must never put them back again. Old as you are, you must forget forever the Telephone Dance.
– Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop!
– That’s better, isn’t it?
As those waxy digits were withdrawn a wall of silence was thrown up between the forest and the hearth, and the old people gathered at the priest’s hem shivered with a new kind of loneliness. They could not hear the raspberries breaking into domes, they could not smell the numberless pine needles combing out the wind, they could not remember the last moment of a trout as it lived between a flat white pebble on the streaked bed of a stream and the fast shadow of a bear claw. Like children who listen in vain to the sea in plastic sea shells they sat bewildered. Like children at the end of a long bedtime story they were suddenly thirsty.
35
Catherine’s uncle was happy to see le P. Pierron leave in 1670 for a post at the Iroquois mission on the St. Lawrence. Many of his brethren had been converted to the new faith, and many had left the village to live and worship at the new missions. The new priest, le P. Boniface, was not any less effective than his predecessor. He spoke the language. Perceiving how the Indians loved music, he formed a choir of seven- and eight-year-olds. Their pure rough voices drifted through the village like the news of a good meal, and many were lured to the little wooden chapel. In 1673 this village of less than four hundred souls witnessed the salvation of thirty of them. These were adult souls – the number does not include infant souls or moribund souls. Kryn, the chief of the Mohawks, converted and established himself as a preacher at the new mission. Of all the Iroquois, the Mohawks were the most susceptible to the new doctrines, they who had been most ferocious in their original resistance. Le P. Dablon, Superior General of the Missions of Canada, could write in 1673: La foi y a été plus constamment embrassée qu’en aucun autre pays d’Agniers. In 1674 le P. Boniface led a group of neophytes to the mission at Saint-François-Xavier. Shortly after he returned to Kahnawaké he died during a December snowfall. Le P. Jacques de Lamberville replaced him.
36
The cabins of the village were empty. It was spring. It was 1675. Somewhere Spinoza was making sunglasses. In England, Hugh Chamberlen was pulling babies out with a secret instrument, obstetrical forceps, the only man in Europe to deliver women with this revolutionary technique which had been developed by his grandfather. Marquis de Laplace was looking at the sun prior to his assumption that the sun rotated at the very beginning of existence, which he would develop in his book, Exposition du Système du Monde. The fifth reincarnation of Tsong Khapa achieved temporal supremacy: the regency of Tibet was handed to him by Mongolia, with the title Dalai Lama. There were Jesuits in Korea. A group of colonial doctors interested in anatomy but frustrated by the laws against human dissection managed to obtain “the middle-most part of an Indian executed the day before.” Thirty years before the Jews re-entered France. Twenty years before we remark the first outbreak of syphilis in Boston. Frederick William was the Great Elector. Friars of the Order of Minims, according to a regulation of 1668, should not be excommunicated if, “when about to yield to the temptations of the flesh … they prudently laid aside the monastic habit.” Corelli, the forerunner of Alessandro Scarlatti, Handel, Couperin, and J. S. Bach, was, in 1675, the third violin in the church orchestra of St. Louis of France, which was in Rome in 1675. Thus the moon of the seventeenth century waned into its last quarter. In the next century 60,000,000 Europeans would die of smallpox. F. often said: Think of the world without Bach. Think of the Hittites without Christ. To discover the truth in anything that is alien, first dispense with the indispensable in your own vision. Thank you, F. Thank you, my lover. When will I be able to see the world without you, my dear? O Death, we are your Court Angels, hospitals are your Church! My friends have died. People I know have died. O Death, why do you make Halloween out of every night? I am scared. If it’s not one thing it’s another: if I’m not constipated I’m scared. O Death, let the firecracker burns heal once more. The trees around F.’s treehouse (where I am writing this), they are dark. I can’t smell the apples. O Death, why do you do so much acting and so little talking? The cocoons are soft and creepy. I am afraid of worms with a butterfly heaven. Is Catherine a flower in the sky? Is F. an orchid? Is Edith a branch of hay? Does Death chase the cobwebs? Has Death anything to do with Pain, or is Pain working on the other side? O F., how I loved this treehouse when you lent it to me and Edith for our honeymoon!
37
The cabins of Kahnawaké were empty. The fields around were filled with workers, men and women with handfuls of kernels. They were planting the corn in the spring of 1675.
– Yuh yuh, went the strains of the Corn-Planting Song.
Catherine’s uncle squeezed his fist over the heap of yellow cradled in his palm. He could feel the powers of the seeds, their longing to be covered with earth and explode. They seemed to force his fingers open. He tipped his hand like a cup and one kernel dropped into a hole.
– Ah, he mused, in such a way did Our Female Ancestress fall from heaven into the waste of primeval waters. Some are of the opinion that various amphibious animals, such as the otter, beaver, and muskrat, noticed her fall, and hastened to break it by shoveling up earth from the mud beneath the waters.
Suddenly he stiffened. In his mind’s heart he felt the sinister presence of le P. Jacques de Lamberville. Yes, he could feel the priest as he walked through the village, more than a mile away. Catherine’s uncle released a Shadow to greet the priest.
Le P. Jacques de Lamberville paused outside Tekakwitha’s cabin. They were all in the fields, he thought, so there’s no point trying even if they let me in this time.
– La ha la ha, came a tinkle of laughter from within.
The priest wheeled around and made toward the door. The Shadow greeted him and they wrestled. The Shadow was naked and easily tripped his heavily robed opponent. The Shadow threw himself on the priest, who was struggling to extricate himself from the coils of his robe. The Shadow in his ferocity managed to entangle himself in the very same robes. The priest quickly perceived his advantage. He lay perfectly still while the Shadow suffocated in the prison of a fortunate pocket. He got up and threw the door open.
– Catherine!
– At last!
– What are you doing inside, Catherine? All of your family is in the field planting corn.
– Let me look.
– No. Let it go on hurting.
– What a lovely thing to say, child.
– I’m nineteen. Everyone hates me here, but I don’t mind. My aunts kick me all the time, not that I hold anything against them. I have to carry the shit, well, someone has to do it. But, Father, they want me to fuck – but I have given my fuck away.
– Don’t be an Indian Giver.
– What should I do, Father?
– Let me have a look at that toe.
– Yes!
– I’ll have to take off your moccasin.
– Yes!
– Here?
– Yes!
– What about here?
– Yes!
– Your toes are cold, Catherine. I’ll have to rub them between my palms.
– Yes!
– Now I’ll blow them, you know, as one blows one’s fingers in the winter.
– Yes!
The priest breathed heavily on her tiny brown toes. What a lovely little cushion her big toe had. The bottoms of her five toes looked like the faces of small children sleeping tucked up under a blanket up to their chins. He started to kiss them good night.
– Tosy rosy tosy rosy.
– Yes!
He nibbled at a cushion, which felt like a rubber grape. He was kneeling as Jesus had kneeled before a naked foot. In an orderly fashion, he inserted his tongue between each toe, four thrusts, so smooth the skin between, and white! He gave his attention to each toe, mouthing it, covering it with saliva, evaporating the saliva by blowing, biting it playfully. It was a shame that four toes should always suffer from loneliness. He forced all her tiny toes into his mouth, his tongue going like a windshield wiper. Francis had done the same for lepers.